I had a chat with Ben over at ftrack just now about producing content for their website and growing community, and they were interested in having a series of webinar about Pyblish.
How these are actually produced and what they will contain is still being discussed. Here’s the overall gist.
Video 1 - Introduction to Pyblish
Talk about why it exists, what it does and doesn’t do.
Video 2 - Pyblish in Production
Here he mentioned you specifically @tokejepsen, and the overall impression was “the more the merrier” which got me thinking of having @BigRoy and @mkolar take part (if you want!)
For either part, it could either be slides and videos with a live voice over, maybe drop in a webcam video to keep the visuals interesting, or it could be an Fxguide-style “interview” where two of us have a dialog, one asking questions and the other filling in the blanks. (What other interesting style can you think of/have you seen?)
For the production examples I’m dependent on you, as you’re the ones with the productions.
The cookie at the end of the stick for each of us is publicity. I win because it will be about Pyblish, you win because it will be about you and your studio, and we’ll all be hosted and promoted by ftrack. I think of it kind of like how Shotgun has their Psyop, so shall ftrack have their {enter name here}.
I suggested to start producing, about a 30 min segment, by next month but it sounded flexible on their end.
Would any of you be interested in doing this with me?
Thanks Roy, I think your content would be a good representative for great commercial and short film work done in relation to Pyblish, whereas Toke and Milan has got the feature film and tv aspects covered.
Come to think of it, maybe I can bring David into the mix from TTGames to cover his use in a major games studio.
It will be hosted on ftrack.com, and it will likely have an ftrack logo in it somehow, but it doesn’t necessarily have to involve ftrack the software.
To my understanding, they are interested in content for their site and their community, which as I understand it is on the agenda for expansion. We’ll simply be in their archive of “things related to what we do” for people to look at not only Pyblish, but other related things, and ideally not have to step outside of the “ftrack sphere”.
That’s my understanding at least, we only spoke for about 10 minutes so I expect to know more about it as time progresses. It was also my understanding that they will start producing these soon, within the coming days/weeks, so it’s likely we’ll get some examples of what and how it will look and work.
@jedfrechette, would you be interested in joining to talk about how you use Pyblish in your shop? From some brief Googling, I suspect you may cover a quite unique use case from that of the rest of us.
[quote=“marcus, post:5, topic:183, full:true”]I suspect you may cover a quite unique use case from that of the rest of us.
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Yeah, I’m the guy who thought it would be a good idea to integrate Pyblish with a bunch of host apps from vendors who can’t imagine why a user would want an API, let alone one in a nice language like Python. Other than that I’m just trying to solve all the same problems as everyone else.
In all seriousness, things have gone pretty well, but I don’t have anything complete enough that I’m ready to share yet. If you ended up doing more of these in 6 months or a year I’d probably be interested, but right now I don’t think I have enough to put together a coherent story.
As for focus, I would imagine the audience to be people interested or in the sphere of ftrack, but looking for related content, such as publishing systems. So I’d imagine it being mostly about Pyblish, but somehow relate to ftrack. I think as far as ftrack themselves are concerned, they won’t mind us going full-on Pyblish, and not mention ftrack at all. As I understand it, it’s mostly about gathering related content for their site, and Pyblish is related already without mention of ftrack I think.
Allright, had a word with Ben at ftrack this evening and will be looking at setting up a structure for the 30 minute webinar to be held at 8 pm GMT-0 either next week or the week after, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Practically 15 solid minutes, with some padding for technical issues and tail for questions.
@tokejepsen are you up for it? Does the time work for you? What day is good?
Ben mentioned he liked the suggestion you made above, about keeping it ftrack-centric and even introducing Pyblish through the lens of ftrack.
The idea would be to introduce the concept of publishing from scratch, no assumptions made. What it is, why, when you need it (and won’t need it) and how to use it efficiently. Basically just what I’ve been struggling to put together since day one.
Not an easy task, but let’s think about it and put something together right here me thinks.
I was gonna say that if there’s interest I’m happy to help out if you need anything. We’re in the middle of shoots, moving offices and hiring new staff so there’s not much time to spare though. Nevertheless, exciting news.
Yeah, definitely @mkolar! There will be a few opportunities, let’s have a chat here about who’s most suited for the first round. When would be a good time for you, given the constraints I listed above?
Next week would be troublesome, however the one after I could do anyday. That would also give me enough time to potentially ask for some examples or usecases from Progressive FX, where I recently deployed pyblish/ftrack too. They ended up with exactly what @tokejepsen mentioned minus the hiero part (I really need some time to make it work in nuke studio.). Launching from ftrack but publishing from nuke and sending to farm via Pyblish.
For the first video it might be good to show a very brief publish from nuke and maya, considering those are the two main integrations ftrack has in the own tools, so there’s something to relate to.
Sounds like we’ve got a date, and PFX looks like a really great studio; do you think it might be possible to, beyond just opening a scene and publishing, to flash some of their final footage to the viewers during the webinar? I think it would make a strong impression on the kind of work Pyblish is involved with.
Would it be an idea to have both of you on-board? @tokejepsen you’ll present the Nuke integration whereas @mkolar handles Maya?
For an analogy, I think I might go with the assembly-line metaphor, like how I tried illustrating it in the infographic.
I also got this as reference on the format; we’re free to think variations or even a better format if we should think of any.
For example, I think this is an interesting format, as it gives the viewer something to look at beyond just the static slide.
Practically we wouldn’t be on a stage, and perhaps a webcam doesn’t make for as engaging footage?
Another one I can think of is Fxguide, but I think we can safely scratch that as it isn’t as much an interview, and we won’t be in the same room.
Something from the Unreal Editor could be interesting for reference; I feel the intro video gives it a professional touch and engages the audience, especially with the up-beat sound fx.
Don’t think webcams are going to be good footage. Think screen live streams and live discussionis always good. Couple of Shotgun webinars has a presenter showing something for a while, then discussion/questions after wards.
If we stick to the week after next, any day is good for me. If you have a particular day that works best for you, then let’s go for that.
How about Wednesday, the 17th of February? That should give us enough time to think it through and build up a structure I think. Would it make sense to have a test session with the three of us once or twice before that date, to get a sense of how long things take to walk through and to get comfortable with the presentation format?
